


I'll Be Criticised for Lending Out My Eye

by APgeeksout



Series: French Navy [1]
Category: Fringe, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-09
Updated: 2011-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>South Dakota isn’t the strangest place Olivia’s bosses have sent them on the government’s dime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be Criticised for Lending Out My Eye

**Author's Note:**

> Fringe/SPN crossover, set sometime in late S1 and early S6, respectively
> 
> ~ 1400 words, for which I blame [](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/profile)[**dotfic**](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/) entirely. (With the exception of any non-working parts, which are all on me.)
> 
> Title snagged from Camera Obscura's "French Navy"

South Dakota isn’t the strangest place Olivia’s bosses have sent them on the government’s dime, but getting there does require the longest flight yet. The longest he’s ever taken with Walter, who passes the time in the air and then in the rental car rhapsodizing about the Pińa Colada Slush Puppie – best with a thin layer of the Blue Vanilla flavor suspended at the top, naturally – and fondly reminiscing about a cowboy Halloween costume Peter is fairly certain he never wore.

Teasing him about tin stars and rope tricks cheers Olivia so much that he lets it pass.

Still, the journey leaves him irritated to realize that their important appointment is being held due-south of nowhere, in a faded blue house squatting in the center of what some battered signage identifies as Singer Auto Salvage.

“Seriously, are we on crank detail? Did you piss somebody else off?”

“How do you know it wasn’t you?” Olivia says, sparing him a glance before she returns to her careful scan of the perimeter.

The bearded good-ol’-boy who answers the door examines Olivia’s ID critically before stepping back to let them pass. He takes Olivia at her word that Peter and Walter belong here too, which is good, because he’s a little too busy restraining Walter from wandering the rows of wrecks scavenging for useful bits of wire to produce ID for either of them.

The guy watches carefully from beneath the worn bill of his cap as they cross the threshold, stepping over lines of indecipherable symbols etched faintly into the floorboards. He seems pleased when they pass without incident and leads them into a room that seems to make Walter forget all about the tantalizing junk outside.

It’s a room of layers: at the bottom are good sunlight, boldly patterned wallpaper, a thick area rug, sturdy, tasteful furniture, things that suggest it was a room meant for comfort, for living, once. Before everything got a good, solid coat of obsession, with signs and symbols painted and carved and branded on every possible surface, up to and including the ceiling. He wonders briefly what’s under the rug.

The final level, the icing, is a riot of books. Lining a few woefully inadequate shelves, in piles nestled along the walls, crumbling in crates half-hidden beneath and behind the heavy furniture, lying open on the stained tabletops and threadbare sofa cushions.

Really, it’s like a low-tech version of what the lab would probably have become by now, if Astrid weren’t so adept at forestalling or patching up Walter’s messes.

“Can you tell me about why we’re here, Mr. Singer?” Olivia begins, too professional – or at least too inured to the crazy – to bat an eye at their surroundings.

“Bobby, please,” he says, motioning her toward a table which has been cleared except for a leather-bound portfolio and a neat stack of manila files.

“I know a lot of things, Agent Dunham, and one of ‘em is how to tell when I’m looking at something that ain’t in my wheelhouse.”

“What an elegant organizational system!” Walter announces from one of the corners stacked deepest with leather volumes and loosely bound sheaves of paper. “Peter, if we could replicate this with my files… how productive I could be! Just imagine!”

“Oh, I’m imagining, all right.” He gives an only slightly-exaggerated shudder and tries to follow the story their host is telling Olivia. Something about a missing tourist and lost time.

The guy seems unperturbed that he and Walter aren’t exactly engaged in the conversation, what with Walter moving from one stack to another, murmuring to himself about “Enochian! Sanskrit! The Balkans! Malaysia! Simply extraordinary.”

Bobby Singer seems content to deliver his information directly to Olivia. He doesn’t assume Peter’s the one he needs to address, the way a certain kind of dude always does, even when it couldn’t be more obvious that he’s only around so that Olivia doesn’t need to keep Walter leashed to her wrist. Peter starts to think maybe he hasn’t given the guy enough credit.

“What leads you to believe that this missing person case is in our wheelhouse?” Olivia asks.

“Because the woman who basically vanished into thin air was a chemist doing some seriously confidential work,” he says, “and because John Scott was a good man to know when your family gets themselves into trouble as often as mine.”

Olivia’s eyes darken for an instant, the way they always do when his name comes up, but the moment passes and she nods at the documents on the table between them. “And before, you would have shown John some evidence?”

Before he can move to read over her shoulder, he hears Walter’s sudden gasp of awe. One of the suspicious boxes lined up beneath the window has apparently offered up a fossil, part of a desiccated jawbone that Walter cradles reverently in his palms, careful of the dozens of tiny, sharp fangs that line its surface.

“This is marvelous! If I had a lab, I’ll bet I could extract enough DNA to recreate this creature.”

“Why would you want to do that?”  Better for everyone not to remind him that he does have a lab. 

“Don’t you have any imagination at all, my boy? Because we could!”

He takes Walter’s hands between his own, gently removing the bone fragment and depositing it on top of the least precarious-looking pile.

“Later, we can rent _Jurassic Park_ and explore why that’s a terrible idea. Right now, let’s see if Olivia could use our help.”

“Help Olivia, yes,” he nods at the wisdom of this idea, pulls his hands free, and approaches the table.

“Olivia! This is a delightful place! Thank you for bringing me!” he booms, eliciting a smile from Olivia and an affable nod from Singer.

“Sorry. He gets a little nosy about other researchers,” Peter offers. “I don’t think he disturbed anything.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nice to have somebody else appreciate it now and then,” he says with a rueful smile. He stops to address Walter directly “If you want, I’ll give you the nickel tour before you folks head out, Dr. Bishop.”

“That would be wonderful,” Walter pronounces softly. He’s smiling like Singer has just offered to build him a Slush Puppie fountain, and suddenly Peter finds himself grinning too.

“But first, Walter, you should probably see these,” Olivia says, the corner of her mouth turning down like she hates to break the spell.

She holds out a handful of stills from security camera footage of the truck stop convenience store where Dr. Rosemary Sanchez vanished sometime during the seventeen minutes and eight seconds that none of the 23 other customers or employees can seem to account for. Standing inconspicuously in the background of each frame is a man in a dark suit and hat. It’s only on a second, more thorough examination that you might notice that he doesn’t appear to have any eyebrows.

“Oh, have you met my friend?” Walter asks brightly, sounding pleased at the prospect of having mutual friends with someone like Singer.

“Afraid not,” he says, “but I figured if he was around, your people had better know about it sooner than later. And…” he pauses to fold back the cover of the leather folder revealing the pages within, yellowed and curling with age.

Peter can tell the type will be miserable to slog through later, with words meandering past the right margin, paragraphs pressed together without the luxury of whitespace in between, the “y” key wildly out of alignment with its peers. But none of that explains Walter’s sharp gasp or the death grip he reaches blindly to clamp onto his arm.

“Walter?” Olivia’s gaze bounces from Walter to Peter and back again, concerned and curious in equal measure. “Is this what I think it is?"

Walter flips through the pages carefully, like they might sting him, nodding slowly. “An incomplete copy of Destruction Through Technological Progress,” he says somberly.

“I thought you all would get more use out of it than I ever will,” Singer finishes. “You’re welcome to it, so long as you don’t ask me how it ended up in my library.”

“It’s a deal,” Olivia says, offering Singer a warm handshake while Walter gathers the manuscript tight against his chest with one arm.

Walter’s right hand remains clasped around Peter’s forearm like one of them will float away if he lets go. Still, his grip has loosened enough that Peter’s pretty sure he won’t lose the limb after all, so he pats Walter’s hand more than a little awkwardly and doesn’t break away just yet.

Apparently satisfied with this arrangement, Walter smiles sunnily at Singer and says, “Now, about that tour…”


End file.
